“Well, aren’t you a stubborn one.”
The voice was… detached, the faintest notes of amusement just barely audible beneath the polite disinterest. Idithal turned in place, looking for its source - and taking in his surroundings as he did. A posh sitting room greeted him, the decor tastefully extravagant, all done up in deep, bloody scarlets and burnished gold. Sin’dorei colors, though of darker shades than the heraldry he was used to. He wondered if it were a deliberate choice of style, or if the room was simply dulled with age. A coat of dust covered every surface he could spy, cobwebs hung limp in high corners and between furniture that was beginning to tatter and fray.
It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that the world was in a fidelity he did not recognize. More vibrant, sharper, but oddly muted. Walls did not allow his sight through, but stood immutable with their aged filigree and chipping paint. This was, a distant, academic part of him realized, how others must see. How he had once done, before he had consumed a demon and become who he now was.
Not that he could remember anything from before.
In fact, he could not remember coming in to this room, or the home that presumably housed it. He had been… Had been…
Crumbling architecture, broken tombstones, candles burnt down to the quick, chains made of old, blackened iron. They burn as they are wound around him - the metal frigid cold against his skin. She is a shadow in a corner of the room, imposingly tall and in a frilled dress more suited for a ball than a mausoleum. Firelight dances in her eyes, flashes across pointed teeth when she apologizes and promises him it will hurt.
He looked down at his arms, bare and scarred, sickly light spilling through rends in his flesh. The weight of iron pulled at their every movement, but he could not see the chains.
“Fear not, your shackles still remain.” That voice again, closer - by the fire. Had it been lit a moment ago? “Forgive me that I found them a touch unsightly, and so elected not to see them.”
There was a plush sofa that he did not remember seeing as he spun, and a man sat in it that he most certainly would have remembered. He was an elf - sin’dorei, to match the room, with eyes that glow a dull, lifeless blue beneath a head of neatly coiffed hair. His face had the usual noble bearing of his kind, and his lips were pulled into a recreation of a smile that was just slightly off from perfect.
“Please, sit. You have come all this way to see me, I would be remiss if I did not offer you at least some comfort as reward.”
Idithal blinked, and between the fluttering of his lids another sofa had spontaneously come into existence beside the stranger’s. He stood still, and invisible hands gripped him by the shackles he could no longer see and dragged him to the seat.
“Wonderful,” said his host, that same, emotionless smile not so much as twitching.
He made to stand, but leaden weight forced him back into the cushion. “Who are you? Where are we?”
“I believe you know the answer to at least one of those questions.”
The world tinges red, the chains tightens around him until they bite into his skin and his blood is lost in the haze of anima. It screams from him, torn from his soul and drawn out through his throat in tormented cries.
“Remember, boy,” she says, claw-tipped fingers outstretched towards him as he writhes. “Remember, and repent.”
“Revendreth,” he mumbled, phantom pains echoing through him and causing him to grimace. “I went to… To find out who…”
The stranger across from lifted a hand and gave a small, sarcastic wave. “Hello, me,” he said, voice filled with false cheer. “I had hoped never for us to meet, but as I said. You are frustratingly tenacious when you wish to be - not that I ought to have been surprised.”
“I don’t understand,” was the first thing Idithal could think to say, and his… twin? Doppelganger? Psychotic break? The other guy gave a mirthless chuckle.
“Not precisely quick on the uptake, though I believe that to be more of a fault of environment than intrinsic flaw. You tend to rely upon others to do the thinking for you.” The other hummed, the hand that had waved now drumming across the arm of his chair. A leg lifted to cross over his knee, and his head tilted in consideration. “Entertaining, certainly, though I must admit to a hint of frustration. I was always rather self reliant, whereas you tend to fall apart without guidance - no offence intended.”
“Fuck you,” he growled, and the ghost of a rattle sounded out as he attempted again to leap from his seat - again without success. “Tell me what’s going on!”
His answer was that same, damnable smile, as though it had been chiseled into his other’s face. “Ah, there is the temper. Naughty naughty, brother, dear - do you mind that I call you brother? I find it helps to keep things a mite less confusing.”
Idithal’s chair hopped with the force of his next attempted escape. It righted itself immediately after.
“Now,” the other continued, as if he was not the subject of a murderous glare, “I am sure you were expecting some… tragic play in three parts that would sum up your backstory - or, better yet -”
Idithal blinked, and the posh sitting room had been replaced by the demon-infested ruins of the Vault of the Wardens. He was no longer sitting, but stood up within one of the crystalline prisons, frozen but aware, staring out at the other-him on the other side of the cell.
“- something more akin to this, yes? Perhaps with the demon you had subjugated in place of me, exuding its malevolence into you, giving you an excuse for the evils that you commit?”
Another blink and he was back in the chair. A tremble passed through him.
“I wish that I could regret informing you that such is not the case. The simple truth is that there is no jailer, not any longer. The act we undertook, taking the essence of the Legion within ourselves, warring with it to come out the victor, was above all else a matter of will. A pity for the departed, then, that will happens to be a thing which I have in abundance. I subjugated the demon in whole, took its essence within myself and became it. I won the war.”
Idithal’s jaw worked for a moment as he attempted to find the words. “Then what is this? Why are… How am I here?”
“A miscalculation on my part,” his other shrugged. “Or, perhaps, finding myself unused to our newfound ability. You know well by now that the demon consumed specialized in withdrawing and storing the souls of others. Due to my unfamiliarity, I managed to slip myself into the bounds of that metaphysical cage, leaving my body temporarily without… agency, shall we say. You were a sort of autonomous response, the simplest, most basic parts of me taking hold so that I was not some empty husk upon the floor. I had, in fact, been near to wresting control of myself back when the Illidari threatened to kill us, but then…”
The silence was leading, and Idithal’s voice was small when he answered it. “Vylen.”
“Just so. I found myself intrigued by her intervention, by what use she might have had for you. I contented myself to sit back,” he waved a hand at the room they were in, “and watch events unfold, with the knowledge that I might intervene should the need ever arise. And, in truth, it never did. My experimental interest became more of an… existential one, I suppose you might call it. I came to wonder how you might grow, with the seeds of me in you, sewn in some foreign soil. It has been a treat, watching you become an arguably better person than I had ever pretended to be, when I came from a loving home and family, and you were birthed in a camp full of demonic betrayers. Not to mention that, through you, I have been able to experience my revenge far greater than I had ever dared to hope.”
Idithal’s head spun. His entire life was just… a fluke? A game? A story, to stave off the boredom of the man he had once been?
“Your revenge? I don’t… I don’t understand, any of this.”
The other’s legs uncrossed, then came together again - the opposite leg now on top. “I should, I suppose, start at the beginning. Allow you a bit of the catharsis you sought in that fool plan of yours -”
He has screamed and screamed and screamed until his throat has torn to pieces and there is not enough of him left to rebuild it.
“- if only to prevent it from ruining my fun. We were born with what our dear sister once described as a remarkable capacity for apathy. In truth, a mind healer likely would have done us some good in our formative years - especially after father’s passing, but mother was a proud sort who refused to admit that anything might be wrong in her baby boy’s head. She coddled, and I loved her for it, but one cannot help but wonder how they might have turned out in different circumstances. Well…”
He trailed off, sending Idithal a look that sent shivers down his spine.
“One who did not have the particular opportunity that you have afforded me might wonder, I suppose. I digress - as you have experienced for yourself, it is intensely simple for us to assign no value to life. Conversely, for those few we do manage to care for, the depth of our esteem for them is… worrying, in a certain capacity. A thing which you have also found out. Tell me, which hurts worse? The scar she left, or the intangible ache of betraying your friend?”
His expression shifted for the first time, to one of honest, open curiosity.
“I had never been able to manage friends, you see. My family - my loved ones, were all that I required. To bother with those of lesser value seemed too inefficient for me, but I watched you try it. You cared for - care for? - that Light totem far less than you do dearest Vylen, but even that is more than I am familiar with.”
“Isilliya,” was all he could bring himself to say. “Her name is Isilliya. Not ‘Light totem.’”
His other waved away the correction. “Yes, yes, as you say. Mn. Carrying on - to me, my mother and sister were as Vylen is to you. They were the ones I loved. The only ones. Naught else in all the worlds and all the realms mattered. I used that, to keep them safe. Used how little value I saw in others to place value upon myself. I learned to spy, to stalk, to kill - and I charged good gold for all of it.”
“It wasn’t enough,” Idithal murmured. He wasn’t an idiot, he could see what was coming.
His other’s face froze, became as blank as a statue’s. “It was not. War has a habit of spilling over, of claiming lives uninvolved in it. I lost them both in the Second War, in a clash between the Horde and Alliance. Tell me - in what you imagined to have been a threat against your love, you tore to pieces a friendship you had actually valued, and visited great harm upon a person you had found the capacity to admire.”
Idithal’s head fell, shoulders slumped in shame.
“Tell me, knowing you would do such a thing to a ‘friend,’” the other continued, “how do you think I reacted to the loss of those I loved? What would I have done to those I assigned the same importance as the dirt beneath my shoes?”
It was, after all, what he would have done.
“In droves,” the other agreed, that stony visage cracking to show just a hint of maddened glee beneath. “Any I could find bearing those standards. Any who called themselves soldiers in that damned war. All were complicit. When the dead marched upon Quel’thalas, I stood aside, because it was right. It was just, that innocents suffer and die as my family had, meaninglessly, mercilessly. When the Sunwell fell and the quel’dorei withered, I drank a toast. When the Dark Portal sparked to life and armies marched upon it, I stood within their ranks and planted knives in their backs.”
The madness began to creep into his voice, a sort of keening, hysteric pitch.
“I sabotaged garrisons. I slit the throats of scouts and messengers. I bled them for every step they took against the Legion, against Illidan… and when I had weakened. When I could no longer hide amongst them, or steal enough to sustain myself, I turned to him. Gave myself freely to his cause, because it brought him into contest with those I would see destroyed. It did not matter that we might fail. That my death was likely. So long as we hurt them. So long as they paid in blood and souls for every victory against us. So long as a score of them fell for every one of ours…”
“Why didn’t you come back?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Why did you let me… Live?”
“Curiosity, at first, as I said,” the other shrugged, dragged back from his manic and melancholic edge. “While I had my goal in mind, my vengeance left to take, you were being directed in ways that satisfied that goal. Vylen wielded you rather expertly, and I found myself enjoying the life she found for us. It was… nice, I believe is the proper word, to have others to work with. Educating, to see how your sense of self formed around them. In time, I found myself loathe to part you from the one you had come to love so fiercely, knowing as I do the pain of that loss. I am a monster, brother dear, but I do frown upon hypocrites.”
“So, that’s… That’s it? You just… You think I’m entertaining?”
“You?” The other scoffed. “Heavens, no. You are rather a disappointment. All of my worst traits, and a refusal to acknowledge them. Even now, you crossed over into death and subjected yourself to torture in effort to find someone else to blame for your actions. You came here expecting to find a demon, a dragon to slay, some dark spectre tugging at your thoughts and directing your ill intent. Well, surprise,” he smiled that old, fake smile. “I have done no such thing. Your failures are all your own.”
Idithal felt suddenly nauseous, and a chain snaked its way up his chest to cinch around his throat.
“Not on this carpet,” the other warned. “Mother loved it. Where was I - ah. No, it is not you I find entertaining, it is your life. Had I retaken the reigns of my being, there is every likelihood I would not have survived the tribulations you bumbled your way through. Would not have had dearest Vylen there, holding my hand, keeping me safe from my own inadequacy. No, I would have fallen - perhaps at the Temple, perhaps before, and none would have mourned my passing. You, though… You lived where I would have not, and because of that I have seen so many wondrous things. Countrysides burning in felfire as the Horde and Alliance failed against the Legion. Watched their own paranoid, greedy idiocy then see them taking up broken arms against each other once more. Through your eyes I saw Teldrassil burn. I saw you turn your blades against men and women who thought you their comrade. I watched an Old God’s dreams call them like lambs to the slaughter. I watched the dead rise and turn their cities into charnel houses. I watched them scramble and flail as their leaders were whisked away into a shattered sky.”
As he spoke he had risen from his chair and crossed to Idithal’s. His twin leaned down, a hand placed upon each of the sofa’s arms, and bore his crazed eyes into Idi’s own.
“Through you, I have witnessed my enemies suffer beyond even my darkest imaginings, and I will not stand for your foolishness interrupting my fun. You will leave me, never again to return. You will fix your mistakes, grovel and plea to be taken back into their arms, because they have the strength to survive within the eye of the storm, and I would see it rage around them. You will be better, because I demand it.”
The other abruptly rose and took a step back. He lifted one leg, pressed the sole of a polished boot against Idithal’s chest.
“Goodbye, brother, dear,” the smile was back as the leg pushed out, knocking Idithal back in his chair. “Pray we do not meet again.”
Idi tipped backwards in his seat, and when his back struck the ground he found himself lying on the floor of a crypt, weeping blood and tears, his own breath choking in his lungs.
“I warned you that it would hurt,” said Inquisitor Anasthia, as she floated above his broken form.
